Dangerous Ladies

by Christina Dodd

  “He has aspirations,” Four said grimly.

  “Yet my ambitions are thoroughly crushed. The original Godfather of Amelia Shores isn’t ready to step aside yet.” Devlin indicated the group of gentlemen who sat along the metal railing, watching the street. “That’s his father up there.”

  Meadow stopped still in the street and looked up. From across and down the street, they looked too similar to tell apart—five older men dressed in tasteful, expensive leisure clothing and sipping aperitifs from tall glasses. “Which one is he?”

  She tried not to sound too intense, too interested.

  She doubted that she had succeeded.

  Four stopped with her. “Left to right—Wilfred Kistard, toupee, and a crusty old gentleman with a kind heart. Penn Sample, bald, portly, ear hair, twinkling blue eyes that hide a shrewd brain. He’s the one who thought of cutting Devlin’s local supplies to the hotel.”

  “Did he?” Devlin didn’t appear particularly worried.

  But Meadow was learning a lot about Devlin, and she knew that as of this moment, if Penn Sample were drowning and going under for the last time, Devlin would throw him an anchor.

  “H. Edwin Osgood. Never married, lives alone in his mansion—not a bit of trouble making his payments, I can tell you—and fancies himself quite the ladies’ man. Hair color for men. Bow tie and thick glasses. He’s my father’s sycophant.” Four grimaced. “’Nuff said. Scrubby Gallagher, thinning white hair. He’s my godfather, the oldest, and the only one of the bunch who’s ever lived anywhere besides Charleston and here.”

  Meadow had been raised in her parents’ art studio outside the small town of Blythe in the Cascade Mountains in Washington. She’d attended college at Stanford in California. She’d spent a semester in Rome taking classes and living with an Italian family. She was only twenty-two—and these old guys had never lived anywhere else? She couldn’t imagine being so confined in her mind and heart. “Where did he live?”

  “Atlanta.”

  She laughed briefly.

  Four laughed with her. “Yes, quite a change of pace. His experience broadened his world scope—a profound character defect—and that’s why the others pay him so little heed.” He looked sideways at Devlin. “And it’s the reason he’s forward-thinking enough to invest in Devlin’s hotel.”

  Devlin studied Four. “How did you know that?”

  “I only suspected until this minute.” Four smirked so obnoxiously, Meadow wondered that Devlin didn’t hit him.

  Four was smart; he’d figured out something Meadow knew must be so secret only Devlin and Scrubby Gallagher knew. Yet so stupid; he had to taunt Devlin with his sly intelligence.

  One of the gentlemen, the one with the whitest hair, waved.

  She waved back.

  Four didn’t. “That’s him. That’s my father. He’s only made two mistakes in his life—all the women he married, and all the children he fathered.”

  “Really?” Meadow considered Four. “How many wives and children has he had?”

  “Four wives. One child. Me.” Four pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it with a match, protecting the flame from the ocean breeze with his body and his hand.

  “Four wives.” She had had no idea. “Did all the marriages end in divorce?”

  “All,” Four confirmed. “Three of them—number two, number three, and number four—cited mental cruelty. He’s an indifferent old prick.”

  “And the first wife?” she asked.

  “He divorced her, citing irreconcilable differences.” Four chuckled, amused and ashamed by his amusement. “Actually, it was infidelity.”

  “Really?” She watched Four.

  Devlin watched her.

  “Mind you, this was before my time, but from what I’ve managed to gather, Isabelle was a beauty. Not appropriate, of course. Not one of our class.”

  “Shocking!” Meadow said.

  “For my father it was. He must have been mad for her. She was fooling around with her art teacher, and when the old man confronted her, she admitted it without a bit of shame. He threw her out, of course, and the baby with her.” Four shook his head. “Cold as ice. Apparently the kid was only a couple of months old, and Isabelle had no funds and nowhere to go.”

  “She had a baby?” Meadow’s skin should have been warm in the sun. Instead a chill worked its way along her nerves.

  “My closest shot at a sibling—except she was fathered by the lover.” He flicked his ashes into the wind. “I wish she hadn’t been. She might have taken some of the expectations off me.”

  “Not likely,” Devlin said. “He doesn’t expect much of a woman.”

  “He expects them to be decorative.” Four’s gaze swept Meadow, not insultingly as before, but appraisingly. “He’ll approve of you.”

  “You can imagine my relief,” she said coolly.

  “He’ll like that air, too. He detests a woman who’s demonstrative about her feelings. In fact, he’s not fond of feelings at all.”

  “Because the one time he gave in to his own, his wife betrayed him.” Meadow looked between the two men’s surprised faces. “Honestly, don’t you guys ever think of this stuff ?”

  “Don’t you gals ever think of anything else?” Devlin countered.

  In a flash of irritation, she said, “On occasion, but we gals have our priorities right. Family and feelings first.”

  “Except Isabelle.” Devlin lifted Meadow’s hand to his mouth and kissed her fingers. “Isabelle didn’t think of her family and their feelings when she had that affair.”

  Meadow snatched her hand from his. “I suppose that’s right.”

  Four watched the interaction between them curiously, as if he saw something askew.

  He was correct, of course. She and Devlin were two actors in a nightmare play, performing onstage without knowing their next line, their next scene. And beneath the trappings of civilized manners and banter, dread and anticipation bubbled through her veins, caused not only by the fear that she would falter and betray her mission.

  She also sensed that she was being stalked. Devlin was stalking her, maybe for sex, maybe for . . . she didn’t know why.

  She knew only that she, who was so good at reading people’s motives, did not understand a single thing about Devlin. She knew only that when he watched her as he was watching her now, the blood flowed warm and thick in her veins and she wanted to go somewhere with him and be alone to kiss and touch . . . and mate.

  “No photos of Isabelle exist in the family album,” Four said thoughtfully. “Father tore them up. Is that why? Because he gave in to his feelings and she betrayed them?”

  Meadow looked away from Devlin’s mocking eyes, down at the ground, then out at the ocean. “Probably.”

  “How do you know he tore them up?” Devlin asked.

  “One day I was digging through the boxes of his pictures and realized she was missing. I got curious, so I asked.” Four took a long drag on his cigarette. “He about snapped my head off.”

  “He sounds delightful,” Meadow said.

  “He’d get worse when Isabelle’s picture was in the paper. You see, his wife Isabelle, the one who made my father forever a cuckold in the eyes of his compatriots, went on to become a famous artist.” Four clearly relished imparting the news.

  “Really?” Meadow opened her eyes wide in astonishment.

  “She was the Isabelle, acclaimed darling of the wilderness art world. Are you familiar with her?”

  “Who isn’t familiar with Isabelle?” It should have been a rhetorical question, but Devlin was looking at Meadow. Mocking Meadow.

  And Meadow could scarcely keep from squirming in guilt.

  “Her canvases command upward of a hundred thousand, and they’re appreciating in value all the time,” Four said.

  “He must hate that.” She hoped so.

  “He really hated that whenever she took a lover, it was reported in the gossip columns. He got particularly nasty then.” Devlin actually put
his hand on Four’s shoulder. “Do you recall when he reamed you out in front of the whole school?”

  “You told him to stop, so, asshole that he is, he asked what last name you were going to give your children—and the other kids laughed.”

  “That was the first time he used that line,” Devlin said.

  “That was the first time she slept with a Kennedy.” Four smirked.

  Meadow looked between the two men and realized how much in common they shared. No wonder they were friends—or as much friends as Devlin would allow them to be. “Why would he say such a stupid, unreasoning thing?”

  “He recites a chant over and over to remind him and the Amelia Shores Society of Old Farts of a world order that faded many years ago,” Devlin said.

  “It faded in most of America. But not here. Not in this tiny town, where the elders will kill to maintain their goddamn—pardon, ma’am—world order and their goddamn—pardon, ma’am—place of importance in it.” Four took a long drag, then ground out the cigarette with his foot.

  Meadow looked him right in the eye. “You pick that up.”

  He did.

  “Good boy. Now, shall we go meet Bradley Benjamin?” While she was fortified by renewed indignation.

  She started up the stairs to the restaurant.

  As they approached, the old guys stood up. They were exactly as Four had described—and Bradley Benjamin was exactly as Meadow had imagined.

  Of the old guys, he was the tallest. His posture was military, shoulders back, spine straight. His large, noble, aging nose drooped at the end. His shock of white hair was wavy and thick, his brows white and wild. His eyes were gray, cool and considering. He looked like an old-world aristocrat—and a surge of hatred caught Meadow by surprise.

  This man had thrown her grandmother and mother into the street with no money, no support, and no remorse. He’d let Isabelle take her baby to Ireland to live with her art teacher, and when she sent word that Bjorn Kelly wished to adopt Sharon, Bradley had signed the papers without hesitation. And when Bjorn had been killed and Isabelle had announced her daughter’s death with him, Bradley had not sent a word of condolence.

  Isabelle had insisted that he had emotions. That they were stunted and warped by his upbringing and his background, but that he had them.

  If that was the truth, Meadow wondered what he would do when he discovered . . . what had really happened.

  13

  “Father.” Four shook the old man’s gnarled hand. “Good to see you.”

  Bradley Benjamin grunted and ignored his only son, as he’d been doing from the day he was born. His gaze went beyond Four to Devlin. “Fitzwilliam.”

  “Sir.” Devlin offered his hand, too.

  Bradley took it, shook it, and dropped it as if the contact would contaminate his skin. He scrutinized the pretty girl dressed in silk flowers, and his gaze warmed. “Who is this young lady?”

  “This is Meadow Fitzwilliam,” Devlin said.

  She smiled at Bradley, that open, happy smile that Devlin had come to realize characterized her personality. The one she so seldom wasted on him.

  She might have secrets, but she didn’t allow them to prey on her mind.

  “Good to meet you, Bradley.” She shook his hand heartily.

  Bradley Benjamin stiffened.

  She’d slipped in his assessment. This was the South, the Old South, and young ladies did not call their elders by their first name. In Benjamin’s day, they didn’t shake hands, either.

  Then she smiled at Bradley again, and her sheer charm melted his reserve.

  One at a time, Devlin introduced her to the old farts.

  They twinkled. They beamed. Penn Simple even blushed and sucked in his stomach, and H. Edwin Osgood studied her with narrowed eyes, like man scoping out his next conquest. They all proved the truth of the adage, No fool like an old fool.

  Damn the old fools.

  She was like a weapon in Devlin’s hands, to be used to get what he wanted, when he wanted, and all he had to do was sight down the barrel and squeeze the trigger.

  Old Benjamin held her chair. “Won’t you honor us with your presence?”

  “Thank you.” She seated herself and removed her hat, and the glow of her copper hair caught the gaze of every man in the place.

  Devlin pulled up a chair without being asked and placed himself just behind and off to the side of her right shoulder. From here he could watch the door, watch the street, and, most important, watch the old farts, especially Bradley Benjamin.

  “Meadow is my wife.”

  The collective gasp was satisfying.

  Benjamin’s narrow-eyed outrage made Devlin want to laugh out loud. Devlin could almost hear him accusing Devlin of ruining a young woman’s life, then of bringing a fortune hunter into their midst, and finally of deceiving the old farts by presenting them with a woman of charm and not immediately identifying her so they could snub her properly.

  At last, predictably, Benjamin’s attention turned to his son. “Devlin is married.”

  “I would be married, too, Father, if Devlin hadn’t discovered the lovely Meadow first.” Four performed a sitting bow in Meadow’s direction.

  “Congratulations, Devlin. I can already tell you don’t deserve her,” Penn Sample said.

  “That’s very true,” Devlin answered easily. “No man alive deserves someone as delightful as Meadow—but I have her, and I will keep her.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at him, her eyes wide, and he realized how that must have sounded—and that, at this moment, he meant it.

  “When and how did this marriage occur?” Benjamin asked.

  “I went to my house in Majorca to vacation, and Meadow found me there,” Devlin said.

  “I wasn’t asking you, young man,” Benjamin snapped, “but your lovely wife.”

  Devlin didn’t want her to say the wrong thing, but he shouldn’t have worried.

  “Let’s just say—Devlin and I have had a tumultuous relationship, and leave it at that, shall we?” Meadow laughed. “Now all his lovely wife wants is a drink, and a chance to sit back and talk.”

  She handled the old farts so well. She only fumbled with Devlin, and that pleased him more than he could say.

  He signaled for service.

  The waiter appeared at Meadow’s elbow. “Ma’am, what may I get you?”

  She smiled at him, a zit-laden college kid, with exactly the same amount of pleasure she showed Benjamin and the other old farts. “Don’t call me ‘ma’am’! My name is Meadow. I would love a bottled water, and can I get a menu? I’m starving!”

  “Yes, ma’am. Yes . . . Meadow.” Dazzled, the waiter started to leave.

  “Excuse me, Dave!” Four was half laughing and all annoyed. “I’d like something.”

  Dave came back, flustered. “Of course, sir. What will it be?”

  “A mint julep for me, and for Devlin—”

  “I’ll take a bottled water, too,” Devlin said.

  “Have a julep,” Four urged. “Daddy runs a tab.”

  “Water will be fine,” Devlin told the waiter. “For all of us.”

  Four started to protest the edict, but Devlin subdued him with a glance.

  Damn Four. He’d tricked Devlin into admitting Scrubby’s investment in the Secret Garden. And not that Devlin thought Four would deliberately tell the other old farts, but when he got drunk, he said too much and acted like an ass.

  Scrubby had risked his standing in his community to show faith in Devlin, and he deserved better than betrayal.

  “Of course. Water is my favorite beverage.” Four seated himself and lit a cigarette, as debonair, as privileged, and as annoying as ever.

  “Mrs. Fitzwilliam, I know you’re not from South Carolina, but I can’t place your accent.”

  Trust old Benjamin to ask the questions Devlin needed answered.

  “Now, how do you know I’m not from South Carolina?” With startling speed, she developed an accent.

  “Yo
u have a good ear.” Osgood spoke with a slight lisp, and his thick glasses distorted his watery brown eyes to an unnatural size. That, and the unskillful application of dark brown hair dye created a man better suited to a farce than to this elite group of privileged old men. “Usually when a Yankee tries to imitate us, the sound grinds like a chain saw.”

  “I do have a good ear.” She sounded cockney, then smoothly switched to a Hispanic accent. “I tried drama in college, but I couldn’t cut it as an actress.”

  Did she have an accent or didn’t she? Devlin was suddenly unsure. Could she have fooled him from the moment she’d fallen on his stone lion?

  He wanted to know her name. He had to discover her true identity. He needed to know everything there was to know about the mysterious Meadow . . . and before their affair was over, he would. He swore it.

  “A lovely young woman like you? I would think you’d be a Hollywood star by now!” While Penn Sample pried, charm oozed from his pores like 3-IN-ONE oil.

  “I cried when I played the sad parts and laughed at the funny ones.” She laughed now. “As my coach said, that’s not acting; that’s audience participation.”

  Wilfred Kistard blotted his damp forehead with a snowy handkerchief, looked uncomfortable, and said, “Hot out here already.”

  Dave arrived with the waters. He twisted the top off one bottle and handed it to her, then delivered the menu with a flourish.

  She glanced at the menu. “The house salad sounds marvelous! I’ll have that with blue cheese dressing on the side, and the pasta primavera.” She turned to Devlin. “Do you want anything?”

  “Ham on rye, hold the mayo, deli mustard,” Dave recited. “I remember.”

  “He is such a nice boy!” Meadow said as Dave left. Tilting up the bottle, she drank the whole thing, and each of the men around her watched her throat as she swallowed. She lowered the bottle and sighed with contentment. “That was wonderful! I was dehydrated.”

  “Another reason I know you’re not from the area. You’re more brash than a Southern lady, more forthcoming.” Old Benjamin was not paying her a compliment.

  “Thank you, Bradley. That is so sweet of you!” Devlin recognized the overly vehement note of pleasure in her voice, but no one else here knew her well enough to identify her annoyance.